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nab review_nab 24/04/2014 12:17 Page 2 elegates arriving in Las Vegas for this year’s show were greeted with surprise news of M&A activity involving four significant sector players. Software and networking solutions specialist Imagine Communications announced it was to acquire Digital Rapids, an innovator in IP and file-based media processing solutions and software-defined workflow management technologies. Charlie Vogt, CEO of Imagine Communications, said the addition of Digital Rapids’ advancements in software-based workflow management and transcoding strategically complemented Imagine’s pillars of innovation and rounded out its capabilities. According to Imagine, the acquisition will also create the world’s most comprehensive portfolio of processing and compression solutions for TV Everywhere. Media Asset Management (MAM) solutions, software and services specialist Dalet Digital Media Systems also announced it is to acquire AmberFin, a specialist in video ingest, complex media manipulation, transcoding and quality control (QC) solutions. According to Dalet, the acquisition significantly broadens its product offerings, which are built around an open, IT-centric technology framework. It affirms the company’s dominance in MAM and media workflow management by creating end-to-end solutions that include comprehensive MAM capabilities along with state-of-the art image processing, media transcoding and distribution. “This acquisition allows us to offer the industry the most advanced level of workflow options. AmberFin has been at the forefront in mastering media, including transcoding and video quality control. The company has spearheaded many widely adopted industry standards such as MXF and AS-02. Its talent and expertise directly complement Dalet’s strengths in enterprise MAM-driven solutions,” said David Lasry, CEO of Dalet. BUSINESS. While such industry D of TV compression for Ericsson. “As providers strive to address consumer demand for TV Anywhere, we are focused on helping them make the right choices with their multiscreen video processing deployments.” “Elemental’s view of the future of video aligns well with Ericsson’s vision of the Networked Society where there will be 50 billion connected devices by 2020, 15 billion of which will be video enabled,” said Sam Blackman, CEO and co-founder consolidation was the chatter on the show for Elemental. “The integration of Elemental floor, it was business as usual for the solutions into the Ericsson platform will help majority of other exhibitors, who were enable pay-TV operators, content owners, gearing up for the TV Everywhere, multibroadcasters and sports programmers to screen, cloud-based 4K/Ultra-HD future transform their traditional TV businesses into multiscreen successes across the globe.” CLOUD. Further developments in Virtualised Video Processing came from Cisco, who announced plans to virtualise and cloud-enable the video processing elements of its Videoscape TV service delivery platform, taking “Now is the time to start another step in the Evolved building the necessary Services Platform strategy ecosystems and libraries of compelling UHDTV unveiled earlier in 2014. In content.” addition, the company Gordon Smith, NAB announced enhancements to the Videoscape AnyRes predicted by many observers. encoding solution to support full-frame rate Software-defined video solutions 4K/Ultra High Definition (UltraHD) content specialist Elemental Technologies confirmed for higher quality and the High Efficiency that its video processing software runs on Video Coding (HEVC) standard for more multiple processing architectures including optimised delivery. appliances, blade solutions, virtual machines Joe Cozzolino, SVP, GM, service provider and the cloud, freeing customers around the video infrastructure, said that Cisco’s world to optimise economically customers needed a radically simpler and infrastructure for their particular video more agile infrastructure as they seek to processing application. deliver new video experiences, and stay It also revealed that MobiTV, a specialist ahead of the rapid growth in video in enabling delivery of live and on-demand processing options and formats. “Virtualised TV Everywhere, is using Elemental video Video Processing enables our customers to processing solutions to support its cloudfocus on delivering better video services, based video delivery platform, and that faster and more cost effectively, and frees Elemental’s video processing software is fully them from the burden of buying, configuring integrated into the Ericsson Virtualized and re-configuring individual pieces of Encoding solution. “By expanding Ericsson hardware. As the proven industry leader in Virtualized Encoding to also support cloud and virtualisation, we are using these Elemental software encoding, we are technologies to empower our customers with enabling TV service providers to efficiently far greater agility in deploying compelling TV address the growing complexity of experiences, while